Crossfire Christmas. Julie Miller

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      Somehow, Berto Graciela had found out he was a cop, too.

      He was driving in circles.

      Tommy Delvecchio was dead.

      “Ah, hell.” A moment of painful clarity put the brakes on Nash’s rambling thoughts.

      He’d come to Kansas City with one desperate plan in mind. Without knowing who’d betrayed him in Houston, he’d gone elsewhere to find a sanctuary where he could lie low long enough to safely figure out his next move.

      He reconsidered calling Jake Lonergan, who’d left the DEA due to a nearly fatal head injury that had robbed him of his memory. Jake probably didn’t want any part of the violence chasing Nash to enter his happily-ever-after life. But, sitting in a pool of his own blood and panting for nearly every breath, Nash knew his luck was running out. It might cost him a friendship, but Jake was all he had left.

      Taking his hand off the reloaded gun at his side, Nash brushed the snow off his lap at the next stoplight and reached inside the bag Tommy had brought him to pull out the untraceable phone. Even that subtle shift in his seat renewed the pain like a stab in the back. Thug One had winged him in the leg, creating a discomfort he could simply throw a bandage over. But Thug Three had got him good. He still couldn’t tell if the bullet had gone through or if it was lodged inside him somewhere. All he knew was that he was hurt. He was bleeding. And he wasn’t going to get any better on his own.

      The light changed. A horn honked behind him before Nash stepped on the accelerator and moved along with the traffic past a busy shopping mall and a modern hospital. He debated whether or not to turn off into the hospital’s E.R. But if the men after him were smart—and clearly they were or they wouldn’t have tracked him to K.C.—they’d be checking E.R.s across the city looking for him. Besides, a gunshot victim showing up in a hospital was an automatic call to the local police and a subsequent alert to the DEA office in Houston. That was the kind of publicity he didn’t need. Until he knew who had set him up, trusting anyone, even a cop, wasn’t a good idea.

      When he reached the next crossroads, Nash spotted a narrow two-lane road leading away from the suburbs and turned. He needed to get someplace without all these cars and people—someplace where he could put the first-aid kit in his bag to good use without anyone trying to help him or ask any questions. He needed a place where he could pull off and make sense of the dancing letters and numerals on his phone as he tried to recall Jake Lonergan’s number, which had been programmed into the phone he didn’t want to reactivate.

      The truck wheels spun on a patch of snow-packed road and he dropped his phone to grab the wheel and keep the big Ford from skidding across the asphalt. Coming from Houston, he wasn’t used to driving in weather like this. Of course, if the world outside his cracked windshield hadn’t been such a blur, and he hadn’t been shivering from the icy wind blowing in through his busted window, he might have been able to handle the treacherous stretch of winding road he’d pulled off onto.

      But he was hurt. He was bleeding. He was cold.

      When he crested the hill and hit the next patch of black ice, Mother Nature finally did what a half dozen thugs in two different cities hadn’t been able to do.

      She took him out.

      Nash’s truck sailed off the shoulder of the road and plowed into the ditch. It careened up the other side and slammed into a tree. A wave of snow flew over the truck as he banged his head against something hard and blacked out.

      * * *

      TERESA DRUMMED HER gloved fingers against the steering wheel and hummed along with the Christmas music on the radio while she waited at the stoplight.

      She tilted her gaze up to the big flakes of snow drifting from the charcoal sky into the light from the streetlamps. “See, Emilia?” She taunted the invisible big sister she felt arching a warning eyebrow over her shoulder. “Shopping’s done. Traffic’s fine and I’m on my way home with nary a problem whatsoever. And I did it all by my little lonesome.”

      Not like a couple hours of defiant refusal to heed Emilia’s warning and go straight home in the nasty weather could really quell the nagging, indulgent voices of her siblings in her head.

       You’re so good with children, but if you want any of your own, you’ll have to get serious about a man first. I’d already had Olivia and Maria by the time I was your age. A girl can’t wait forever.

      But she could wait for the right one.

       My husband has a friend I want to introduce you to. He has a good job at the college business office and he’s stable.

      Dullsville. Sounded like another overprotective trap in the making.

       You should move closer to us. They’re building new condos across the street. And it’s a better neighborhood.

      She liked her apartment—had it decorated just the way she wanted. The neighborhood might not be prime real estate, but there were some good people living in her building. Besides, big brother AJ had taught each of his sisters, wife and nieces the basics of self-defense and personal safety. She could take care of herself.

       I don’t want you driving without an emergency kit in your car, especially in winter. Flashlight? Jumper cables? Kitty litter? Make an appointment to get the tires rotated, too.

      Done, done and done. Even before AJ, Emilia, Luisa or Ana had all mentioned reminders about winter driving safety to her.

      Just because she longed for her family’s respect for her choices and a little bit of independence in her life, didn’t mean she was a naive fool. An optimist, yes. A resourceful go-getter. A hopeless holiday lover. But not a fool.

      “Why can’t they see that?”

      The light turned green, and Teresa cranked up the radio, turning her thoughts to something more pleasant. Like sugar cookies. And wrapping gifts.

      She drove through the intersection after the cars ahead of her turned off toward the highway, and she continued on to the back-road shortcut to her neighborhood. The busy roads and businesses open late for holiday shopping gave way to country homes on hilly acreages. Then civilization thinned out to a recycling center and a shooting range. Finally, she was winding through woods and farmland. She’d pass through about two miles of bare trees reaching up like dark, gnarled fingers in the foggy twilight and pretty hillsides of undisturbed snow.

      Although the twisting road was more dangerous than the straight lanes of bypasses and city streets, she loved this drive, especially in the winter. When the stars were out and the moon was full, it could be as bright as all the holiday lights on the Plaza. And on cold, damp evenings like this, with big flakes of snow swirling in and out of the shadows, it conjured up images of gothic romance, with mysterious heroes, hidden castles and storm-swept moors.

      Teresa was imagining a castle hidden behind the frosted branches of the trees when she crested the hill and saw the tire tracks cutting through the snow at the side of the road. Automatically, she pumped her brakes and slowed, peering over the edge of the blacktop.

      “Oh, my God.”

      A silent alarm tightened her grip around the steering wheel. She braked again and pulled onto the shoulder for a closer look, angling her headlights toward the trees.

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